I have been a frequent flyer with Air Malta for the past six years: I fly from Malta to Amsterdam and back nearly every two weeks. This year alone, I have booked over 30 flights.

My company, a Malta-based consultancy firm, works offshore worldwide using Maltese employees. Our home offices are in the Netherlands.

We book our flights with Air Malta mostly on the highest economy rate possible and changeable on the return flights because our business dictates flexibility. We simply have to return sometimes on other dates than our return flight is booked for. Of course we pay a fee to have our tickets changed, but this is normal procedure I would say. Still, I was recently unpleasantly surprised at how far Air Malta is raising this fee.

Leaving with three colleagues for the Netherlands on June 27 we paid nearly E400 for each return ticket. The return flight was booked for July 12. Due to circumstances in the Netherlands we had to return on July 2. When we tried through our Dutch office to change our return flights we were faced with a charge of €170 on each ticket.

Convinced that this was a mistake and a mark-up used by the travel agent, I called the Air Malta reservation desk at Luqa, but they confirmed this extra charge to be correct. An Air Malta employee explained that my seats had to be booked to a more expensive economy seat since our (cheap) seats were not available.

Because I was not prepared to pay these extra charges (and we could easily pay for accommodation at a five-star hotel for this money) I decided to fly back at a later date.

The return flight was booked for July 5 and according to Air Malta only two seats were available and in a higher economy class, so still €80 was charged extra per ticket. I was astonished when I found out after boarding the plane that 50 seats were empty - the number was confirmed by the cabin crew.

I must say I like flying with the national airline because it provides a direct route to Amsterdam, but I don't like being ripped off. On July 12 I had to fly to the Netherlands again, and thought it might be a good idea to take my family of four for a short break. The tickets cost Lm235 per person. Finding this too expensive, I decided to go alone. When I boarded the plane 31 seats were empty.

If Malta wants to bring in more tourists, maybe it is time to reconsider if bringing in airlines charging reasonable fares was such a bad idea.

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.